I recently came across a great post from Ted Kohnen, Chief Marketing Officer at Stein IAS on What B2B Marketers Can Learn From Candy Crush. If you’re like me you are totally addicted to Candy Crush. It’s been almost two months since i’ve started playing and I still can’t put the game down, I’m stuck at level 181, but continue to “crush” daily on my commute into work.

Ted’s article highlights four best practices which marketers can take away from Candy Crush.

1) Simple content is often the most effective

2) The journey has no end.

3) “Gate” content at the most appropriate places and times.

4) Big data insights lead to increased stickiness.

In summary, this article really sums up four really great content marketing lessons. Not only is content king, but keeping content simple is crucial for successful content marketing. This is the most basic…

Businesses both large and small have been affected by the recent government shutdown. However, small businesses seem to be taking the biggest hit. Last Friday, President Obama met with nine small business owners from across the nation to discuss the kind of impact the federal government shutdown has caused their businesses. He also updated the business owners on where the nation stands as of now and the efforts Congress has put forth. This is in attempt to avoid what would be the first-ever default in the nation’s credit. These business owners shared their own personal accounts with the President about projects they were forced to put on hold or potentially cancel, workers they’ve had to furlough, and the staff changes that the shutdown has caused.

The shutdown has created different issues depending on the business. Hester Clark, of Hester Group in Jacksonville, FL, is afraid she will not be able to “win more business” a recent article claims. “My firm has won several government contracts in the past two years and I worry about how I’ll pay my employees as we lose clients due to the government shutdown,” Clark states. This has grown to be a major concern for small businesses across America. Due to this, several businesses have had to cut their staffing nearly in half depending on the company.

Another concern is how quickly the shutdown impacted businesses. For the owner of Brick Simple, Det Ansinn said, “I didn’t expect the shutdown to affect our business so immediately. One of our clients does work with the CDC, however, so they’ve put their project on hold. This shutdown affects our ability to plan ahead.” Companies are unable to create new project and contracts because they are unaware of what will occur in the future.

The shutdown also means that all SBA loan applications cannot be approved as of now. For small businesses, they cannot obtain help exporting any of their goods to foreign companies. This has caused a major strain for smaller companies. Since they now have to postpone projects small businesses are struggling to take care of their employees considering contracts are drying up.

President Obama was appreciative to meet with the owners and thanked them for all of their hard work and dedication they have put forth during this time. He stressed that he understands how the shutdown has created such large problems for small business owners. During the meeting, he also stated that his first order of business is to urge Congress to end the shutdown. Obama desires to find different ways to invest in growing the nation’s economy. Hopefully, a negotiation will come out of all of this.